BRINGING RYAN HOME™ IS THE HEARTBREAKING STORY OF RYAN'S PARENTS, LISA AND RODNEY BALDWIN, WHICH BEGAN IN THE FALL OF 2003.

Our family plight began in the fall of 2003. We live in Black Mountain, a neighboring town of Asheville, NC, in Buncombe County. Asheville is a city surrounded by the beautiful western NC Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Asheville is the location of the famous and beautiful Biltmore House and the lovely Grove Park Inn. Local tourist attractions abound here and people travel to our area and take pride in our surroundings. These lovely surroundings and mountain terrain in fact became the back drop for injustice and lack of caring concern towards our son Ryan and his family.

Ryan was only 11-years-old when he became ill and was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalopathy or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Six long years have passed since that time. The absence of medical knowledge, public awareness, and local health agencies within our local medical community that lack this knowledge concerning our son's diagnosis (ME/CFS), have greatly contributed towards the nightmare our family has encountered; a nightmare which has involved dealing with physicians, educators, and county and state officials.

As parents, we were ready to deal with Ryan’s health challenges, but we were not prepared for what was to come from the Buncombe County Social Services agency's representatives. These are the same agencies which are supposed to be helpful and nurturing towards families dealing with such trying issues. For these reasons, and more, it is why we are sharing our family’s plight through this web site.

We also realized that we are not alone in this terrifying family experience. As our family plight began to take place, we became aware of the fact that hundreds of other families across the U.S. were and continue to have similar issues. Our issues are specifically related to the lack of education and professional knowledge as demonstrated by Buncombe County school administrators, county officials, and local and state social services. These issues concerning CFS and other neuroendocrineimmune illnesses and disorders seriously impact and affect families across the U.S. every day.

As parents we did everything possible to help our son Ryan, by providing care, accommodations, understanding and compassion towards him. Nonetheless, Ryan was taken from us by Buncombe County Department of Social Services (DSS) (at the age of almost 17 years old ) and placed in their custody in January of 2009. This situation occurred only after a local physician at a local children's hospital filed a malicious report against our family in 2007. A malicious report which once unfounded, became the catalyst in propelling the allegations of suspected Munchausen By Proxy by social workers within the department. Later those suspected charges would be changed to Factitious Disorder by Proxy, and lastly changed to a failure to provide our child with mental health care and a primary care physician.

On that infamous day, when the county took away our only child, our lives took a turn for the worse. As parents, we have struggled every day with trying to understand why Buncombe County DSS took such draconian steps and removed Ryan from our loving and caring home; then later placing him in the county foster care system, under the custody of the Buncombe County Department of Social Services.

This website is about our struggles as we try to educate a community regarding our son's illnesses. We never once stopped fighting for our son’s return. We fought hard and with all we had – financially, emotionally and physically, to regain custody of our son. This is our story and through this website we hope to educate families and the public.

As we look back into the struggles that we have suffered, we hope that someone in power will realize that the DSS system in the state of North Carolina and more specifically in Buncombe County is broken. The system in place is supposed to assist families like ours, not use the county’s resources to destroy families. More importantly, we hope that our plight will become a tool for change, and to give other parents, who might find themselves in the same situation, an avenue and the courage to battle such a system. A system that in our case understands very little about our son's diagnoses and health challenges.